Israel now faces extremely difficult choices.
Israel now faces extremely difficult choices.
T he Hamas surprise attack on Israeli civilians changes what had been the recent rules of the game between Hamas and Israel, and it may change much more in the Middle East.
For several years, and especially in the last year, it seemed that Hamas had decided to seek calm in Gaza, where it governs, while supporting violence and terror in the West Bank. And in the West Bank, terrorist attacks increased each month. Meanwhile, Israel allowed 17,000 workers to enter Israel from Gaza each day, and there was talk of raising that number to 30,000. It seemed that there was a silent agreement between Israel and Hamas to keep things quiet in Gaza.
But that view assumed that Hamas cared about the lives of the Gaza population, and the new attacks have proved yet again that it does not. Recent accounts of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 have noted the problem of the “conception” back then. Israeli security officials came to believe that after the crushing Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, an attack so few years afterward was inconceivable. Then it happened. In this case, the “conception” was that Israel could reach a modus vivendi with Hamas — because Hamas valued calm in its base, Gaza. Obviously, it does not.
Why did Hamas attack now? No recent event in Gaza explains the timing — nor do recent visits to the Temple Mount by Israelis. What seems obvious is true: The attack was timed for the 50th anniversary of the surprise attack in 1973. No doubt Hamas must be hoping as well to delay and even prevent the Israeli–Saudi rapprochement that is being discussed, but this attack has been in the planning for many months. When the planning began, Hamas had no way to know where a Saudi–Israeli negotiation would stand in October. What it did know was that the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur attack would occur this year on a sabbath and during Jewish holy days (the last two days of the Sukkot festival). The possible delay in a Saudi–Israeli deal was surely a happy addition for Hamas but was an add-on, not the original motive.
One can see other motives. This attack shows the world and shows Palestinians that Hamas is strong, while the Palestinian Authority and PLO are weak. And it shows Iran the same thing, perhaps giving hope to Hamas leaders that Iran will give them even more support.
This attack is different from the “usual” Hamas use of rockets and missiles over the border. This was a ground attack meant to capture dozens of Israelis and murder many more. The rocket attacks — and there were thousands — seem like a diversion, while the murders of civilians and captures of hostages were the goal. Hamas’s success means that Israel will surely appoint another national commission to investigate the failures of planning, defense, and intelligence, as it did after the 1973 war. That war led to a discrediting not only of several individual leaders but also of the entire establishment that had ruled Israel since 1948. It is reasonable to draw a direct line from the 1973 war to the defeat of the Labor Party, for the first time, in 1977 when it was beaten by Menachem Begin.
That’s a warning to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Bibi has often been presented to voters as “Mr. Security,” a reputation that is not likely to survive this week. In the short run, Israelis will unify. There will be no more Saturday-night demonstrations against judicial reform for a while, and a government of national unity is almost certain. Opposition leader Yair Lapid has already called for one. The other key opposition leader, former IDF commander Benny Gantz, had said he would not join a Netanyahu government but would support it on matters like a Saudi deal — from the outside. But Israel, and Israeli politics, are different today.
Yet even a period of great national unity will not, I think, protect Netanyahu and those who have been his colleagues in the current government, or protect the intelligence agencies that completely failed to pick up clues that this major assault was coming. A reckoning will come, though it may be delayed until the commission of investigation can report in six or twelve months.
Israel now faces extremely difficult choices. The idea of a modus vivendi with Hamas is dead. Gaza will now need to be treated like Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon or like Iran itself. The border will obviously need greater fortification. But should Israel seek to reoccupy Gaza? That seems to me a very unlikely outcome — for all the practical reasons Prime Minister Sharon took Israeli forces out of there in 2005. What then can be done? Create large buffer zones on the Gaza side of the border? Destroy more of Hamas’s own infrastructure in Gaza? Restrict further the dual-use materials Hamas is able to import?
If one assumes that Hamas plans to use all the Israelis it captured (and the bodies of Israelis whom it killed and then brought to Gaza) as negotiating assets, Israel needs to counter those assets with moves of its own. Hamas must be very badly hurt in the coming weeks. For example, if buffer zones are created on the Gaza side of the border, Gazans will pay a price (for example in homes and buildings that must be abandoned), but Hamas will pay a price in seeing its small kingdom reduced further in size. There is no way around the fact that Hamas has new assets and that future negotiations over the captured Israelis will be excruciating. That is one reason a government of national unity is called for — to stop opposition parties from politicizing tough decisions by making them partly responsible for Israeli policy in the coming months.
Anything Israel does will affect the civilian population of Gaza. And given the size and nature of the Hamas attack, the Israeli response will be very powerful. Hamas does not care; we know from previous wars that it uses hospitals and schools as safe houses, weapons warehouses, and headquarters. That this brings civilians into danger obviously does not matter to the Hamas leadership. But history proves that as soon as Israel begins to strike, world opinion starts to change. Already, the Archbishop of Canterbury called, on Saturday, for “restraint on all sides, and renewed efforts toward a just peace for all.” He condemned the Hamas attacks, but that was of course not enough; moral equivalency followed a sentence later. It will follow in the words of many governments soon, and every day.
I recall vividly the 2006 Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah; I was serving on the White House staff. Hezbollah began it with a surprise attack across the border into Israel, where three Israelis were killed. For a few days the world condemned Hezbollah. But it didn’t take a week for the calls for “restraint” to be heard — demanding an end to the war Hezbollah had started before Israel had the chance to do real damage to that terrorist organization. Worse yet, the Bush administration was itself split: The president backed Israel, while the State Department, after about two weeks, joined the pressure on Israel to stop its actions.
On the first day of this 2023 war, the Biden administration was solidly on Israel’s side. “My Administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering,” Biden said in a statement. We shall see. “Rock solid” means that U.S. diplomats get instructions to push back against all efforts, at the U.N. or in Europe, to stop Israel from striking Hamas in the coming weeks. “Unwavering” means the word goes down from the top that Biden doesn’t want to hear about undercutting Israel, and demands that his whole administration get in line. I will, sadly, be surprised if “rock solid and unwavering” lasts as long as two weeks.
On the Republican side there is a healthy tendency already to note the role of Iran. Hamas depends heavily on Iranian funding. Iran was broke when Donald Trump left office but is now pretty flush in cash. That’s not just because of the recent deal that paid billions for U.S. hostages but more because the Biden administration has not been enforcing U.S. oil sanctions with any energy. Iranian oil sales and income have risen, and there can be no question that some of Iran’s money is spent on Hamas. The more money Iran receives, the more it makes available to terrorist groups. It is also healthy to note Iran’s role more generally — for example, in supplying drones to Putin for use in Ukraine and in supporting Hezbollah.
But there’s an unhealthy tendency as well: to argue that U.S. support for Ukraine will limit our ability to help Israel. There is no evidence for that claim. Certainly, diplomatic support for Israel, which will soon need our help as world opinion starts to turn against her (as it always does), has nothing to do with Ukraine. If Israel after a few weeks is short of any weaponry, it is very unlikely to be the kind of thing we supply to Ukraine. Take Javelins, for example; Russia has tanks, Hamas does not, so Ukraine needs those, but Israel won’t ask for them. And the kinds of things we supply the Israeli air force will not be exhausted by Ukraine’s tiny air fleet. It would be far better to see Republicans, and Democrats, realize and say the obvious: The world is a very dangerous place, and when our friends and allies are attacked, we will have their backs. That’s the message we want Hamas, Hezbollah, their backers in Iran, and their partners in Russia and China to receive. And to receive from Republicans and Democrats alike.